Things are falling apart in the concluding book of The Dust Trilogy, the next of Philip Pullman's grand trilogies set in a realm that appears, here more than ever, as a intense and skewed version of our own. Organizations are failing, or reorganizing themselves along unfamiliar and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is destroying the air and the seasons"; simultaneously, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Power is shifting from states, and accumulating in the halls of theocrats, the coffers of corporations, the hands of mobs. "Some force is at work, stealthily, imperceptibly", says merchant Mustafa Bey, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his place in an Aleppo cafe. "Aspects we thought were secure and solid are faltering and giving way."
The Central Mystery and The Protagonist's Path
Exactly what that force might be, and ways to oppose it, is the inquiry that propels The Rose Field, which continues where The Secret Commonwealth ended. This is, by all accounts, the author's final excursion into the carefully crafted, endlessly enchanting world he first unveiled in the distant past, with the release of Northern Lights. It's a domain whose terrain maps on to that of the real world, but whose past veers and changes with ours; where the humans appear and reason and act like us, but are accompanied by external spirits, beings in creature form; where the air are filled with enchantresses and legendary creatures, but beneath those skies, buses are taken and beverages is consumed, and middle-aged academics carry Harrods shopping bags. Our heroine, whom we first encountered as a child in the original trilogy, and then met once more as a infant in the prequel, the introductory book with which the author began The Book of Dust, is now a adult: still recognisably the prickly and persistent main character of the prior volumes, but more mature, sadder, more careful, less certain. This circumscription is amplified by her split from her daemon, her daemon – but it was also, paradoxically, the trigger which caused him to abandon her in the first place.
Merging Narratives
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that innocent part of her which she appears to have shed (an trait which he symbolizes as her "vision"), and her journey to reunite with him, were the catalysts of The Secret Commonwealth, which chronicled Lyra undertake a picaresque voyage across the continent and into the Caucasus, meeting with marvel and risk on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in motion, and sinister powers at work. The religious council – the faith's governing authority, and the author's masterfully eerie embodiment of rigid, administrative wickedness – is under recent guidance, and flexing its muscles. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who holds responsible her for his sister's death – has positioned himself into the role of president of the church's ruling assembly, and is set on using his fresh authority to broaden the religion's control. Malcolm Polstead, who rescued baby Lyra to refuge along a swollen Thames as an 11-year-old in the first book, is now an Oxford don with a sideline in spycraft: he is assigned to Geneva to learn more about Delamare's aims. And beneath all of this is the puzzle surrounding the rare and precious essential oil which manifests mysteriously to be the cause of a societal and economic crisis emanating out from Central Asia. The oil is viewed by some as a commercial product, by others as a empirical or mystical miracle, and by yet others – the fanatical "men from the mountains" – as a origin of evil; an challenge that must be eradicated. The dilemma of its origins, what it stands for, and if it should be eliminated or preserved is coming rapidly to the fore.
As in the first series, our protagonist's deeds, and her destiny, are demonstrated to be inextricably connected with the destiny of the realm
In The Secret Commonwealth, these plots ran mostly in tandem. In The Rose Field, they come together. As in His Dark Materials, Lyra's choices and her fate are shown to be deeply linked with the future of the realm. Her personal quest to reconnect with her soul and regain her creativity becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an controlling system which, as such authorities often attempt, is seeking to stifle autonomy of thinking, innovation and art: all the internal, rebellious ways in which people can be free.
Atmospheric Fissures and Philosophical Struggles
The novel starts with the discovery of a set of unusual fissures in the makeup of the Earth's atmosphere: portals that look to open into alternate realities. An example of a window appears to be the origin of the much debated rose oil. The authority, with Delamare at its helm, classifies these openings as a challenge to the religion's beliefs and aims to destroy them. As our protagonist begins to shift from inflexible logic and back to instinct, yet, her belief that these sites must be protected – that their significance and what they offer is in some way vital – increases. "The substance, or rose oil, or the vision, or the botanical realm, or whatever we name it," she says, "we need it." The setting for a Blakean conflict between purity and knowledge is set.
Story Tempo and Personal Evolution
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
